"People all
over the planet are on the move, and whether anyone likes it or not,
with each passing year Western countries will become more racially and
ethnically diverse. But is that a good or a bad thing? According to
most American politicians, diversity is a national boon. Youve
heard the rap: Diversity is our strength. We should celebrate it, blah,
blah, blah. But are they all protesting too much?

Ive always suspected
that whats beneath all that celebrating is a deep fear and an
article of faith. Armed with hate-crime statistics and gang stories,
the media love to keep us informed on all types of racial and ethnic
conflict. But through it all, assorted do-gooders, foundation program
officers and government functionaries still promote the belief that
the best solution to the conflicts created by social diversity is diversity
itself. Thats why they arrange those cheesy multi-cultural community
events and tiresome dialogues in which the black activist
meets the Korean-American activist, white kids go to day camp with kids
of color, etc. The idea is that more contact breaks down barriers and
helps us achieve Rodney Kings dream that well all just get
along.

But according to a
provocative new study by Robert Putnam, one of Americas preeminent
political scientists, its just not true. Putnam isnt regurgitating
so-called conflict theory - the notion that diversity strengthens group
identities, thereby increasing ethnocentrism and conflict. Hes
not predicting racial Armageddon. What he did find in analyzing a massive
survey of 30,000 Americans, however, is a whole lot more interesting
and complex than either Kumbaya or Crash. Diversity,
he argues, is turning us into a nation of turtles, hunkered down with
our heads in our shells.

According to the study,
there is a strong positive relationship between interracial trust and
ethnic homogeneity . The less diverse your community is, the more likely
you are to trust the people in it who are different from you. The flip
side is also true: The more ethnically diverse the people you live around,
the less you trust them. So interracial trust is relatively high in
homogeneous South Dakota and relatively low in wildly diverse Los Angeles.
But dont think its just because we dont trust people
of different races.

In addition to tasking
respondents what they thought of people from different backgrounds,
the survey inquired about whether respondents trusted people of their
own race. The answer was surprising. It turns out that in the most-diverse
places in the country, Americans tend to distrust everyone, whose who
do look like them and those who dont. Diversity, therefore, does
not result in increased conflict or increased accommodation, but in
good old-fashioned anomie and social isolation.

According to Putnam,
residents of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective
life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their
skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from
their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity
and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less
and to spend more time sitting in front of the television.

Putnam considered
and had to reject all kinds of other explanations for his findings.
In the end, some adhere to this pattern more than others, but the numbers
are discouraging all around: Diversity depresses trust and sociability
somewhat more in poorer neighborhoods, but altruism suffers somewhat
more in richer areas. It seems to affect sociability more among conservatives,
but its also a problem among liberals. The effect is felt more
among whites, but nonwhites are not immune. Twenty-somethings seem a
bit less distrustful than older generations but not enough to alter
the overall pattern. Women are equally as affected as men.

None of this means
that we are doomed by diversity. But it does suggest that simply celebrating
it and promoting it is not going to help us get along. Putnam points
to a need for everyone to construct new social identities. He recalls
growing up in a Midwestern town in the 1950s, when religious affiliations
acted as strong social barriers between neighbors. Three decades later,
he says, Americans had more or less deconstructed religion as
a salient social division. Although it was still personally important,
religions power as a social identity had diminished significantly.

More important, perhaps,
whites and nonwhites will have to create a more generous and expansive
sense of we. If, as the study suggests, increased diversity
leads us to withdraw even from our own kind, we may indeed find some
sense of togetherness and common purpose in a truly broad, overarching
identity called American. Maybe once we achieve that, well volunteer
more, vote more and be willing to pay to fix our bridges."

"Together,
apart: A dissection of diversity People in the more diverse areas
are the most likely to withdraw - even from those with whom they have
much in common by Gregory Rodriguez, Star Tribune August 22,
2007 p. A11